Until you see 3 BOv miss in a row. I had a Cannon DBB raptor and it was so depressing to get a shield facing down and watch the BOv hit open air ad that is with Acc x 2 DBB. Since the engine in the game is so crappy and my torps no longer show up I do not get disappointed when THY volley has 2 out 3 miss.

Hey I Used to be Captain Data, well I guess I still am in game but the account link really screwed everything up

right now im trying to imagine a game with no DHCs. it sounds.... much easier to balance. the front loaded damage those cause, out side of a successful torp strike to hull, in an anomaly in game. the way they deal thier damage at the begining of the fireing cycle, an quickly give back the energy tey took after then fire, make all your other weapons fire at more healthy energy level, keeping their damage higher. you only need about a second of on target time for them to do thier entire buisness, were BCs need to point for 4 whole seconds, and hog their energy that whole time. its also stupid easy to use them, point ship, hit CRF, deal large spike. with no team support, quite often 4 DHC can pretty much steam roller anything that isn't a heal boat. it would be really interesting to see a couple of premades swap to DCs for some matches and see how it goes. they might not be able to kill anybody.

what to do about that? nerf them? of buff everything else? nerfing DHCs with how powerful healing is right now would be game breaking, no the option that would take more work is needed. but not that much more work really.

also, i have major gripes about beam arrays. one of my characters often uses a single cannon fleet excelsior, the thing is basically an A10 warthog when tac buffed. the other day i dusted off my acc2, crtH1 beam arrays to give them a shot, been a wile since i had used beam arrays at all. i could not have been more disappointed in them. they were pathetic, even on a cruiser with a LTC tac station backed by 4 tac consoles. i was fireing BO3 and cycling APB every 15 seconds, and using DEM3 at its global and it was still pathetic compared to single cannons.

from what i parsed, i was only dealing about 700-1500 dps with them, maxing at 5k dps in a red alert. wile my singles get anywhere between 1500-2000 dps in pvp, and almost 10k in pve. DEM3 dealt only about 6-9% of my total damage with beams, but between 12-17% with single cannons. the only good thing about beams is that i could use BO3 as a 3k to 9k damage closer, the singles lack a closer but tend to leave someone in such a bad way so quickly that a little burst from someone else is more then enough to kill them.

i really couldn't have done more to make beam arrays more effective, other then use a ship i could slot APO3 on, they were just worthless at dealing damage unless i have about 3 minutes with something alone. fed cruisers turn so damn slow, that this is basically their only weapon. and the finest tactical cruiser the feds have couldn't make them do anything of note. i could jump in a kdf cruiser and be a fat escort though easily, they can turn at a usable measure and use weapons that actually do something. thats the cruiser effectiveness baseline as far as im concerned, theres no reason for fed cruisers to be 1/3 as effective at dealing damage.

keep your 'cruisers are not damage dealer' arguments to your self, they are, when they arent being support boats. high end DEM and high end EWP can be used to hilarious effect, rivaling escort damage, being able to slot multiple holds along with plenty of heals, and on a single cannon excelsior having basically no end to on target up time. im not saying an odyssey or star cruiser should be as dangerous as a vorcha, but a regent or excelsior should be.

im not advocating raising all fed cruiser turn rates to 10 and letting them use DHCs, something more IP friendly and different would be better. first, the fireing rate and look beams have when you use FAW should be the new normal. that alone might be enough of a boost to their DPS, their lazy rate of fire is one of their biggest problems, along with not having a CRF equivalent. it also makes DEM suck with beams, hardly doing anything. CRF is a gigantic buff to cannon damage and effectiveness, honestly too great of a buff, but everything's sort of balanced around that so oh well. FAW is terrible and turns 95% acc beams into 75% acc garbage that spreads its damage harmlessly over any target in range. ether make beam arrays fire at FAW speed naturally, or make FAW a single target, accurate ability.

single cannons look exactly like turrets, this is bad for recognition. i have heard devs say they want things to be visually distinctive so the player knows what they are dealing with, well this is a case were they have failed at doing that. luckily, theres an easy solution. there is already an in game programing asset for a heavy single cannon, borg tac cubes use it, it looks like a single barrel DHC shot, has a DHC like firing cycle, and in the combat log appears as a 'heavy plasma cannon'. replace single cannons with these heavy cannons and they would be GREAT weapons. they would have DHC style front loaded damage, but less of it with more arc. could probably keep the dps the same, or raise it a bit to compensate for beam array's now higher DPS.

oh i might as well mention DCs. give them a 90 degree firing arc, and have them drain 8 energy and they would be worthy of consideration. i'm serious.

DBBs could get a similar treatment that beam arrays got, or not. their purpose is to deliver BOs, thats it. singles with CFR out damage DBBs so bad its embarrassing. use singles in number, not DBBs

cant complain about turrets, though right now im positive that an 8 turret excelsior with a cannons skill at its global would out damage any 8 beam array build. beams are that bad right now.

I have been yelling about the disparity between dual heavys, beam arrays and the general suckyness of fed cruisers that result from it for since the bloody game begun. thx for getting wise to the fact.

Thanks, you don't mention use of keybinds but it does list 2 A2Bs is keybinding them a good idea?

if you use 2 AtB, key binds are a must, you will need to activate it every 10 seconds. in my thread i linked to a GUI that can make keybinds for you, just assign a key to an action and it will generate it for you. its in the table of contents

Quote:

Originally Posted by reynoldsxd

I have been yelling about the disparity between dual heavys, beam arrays and the general suckyness of fed cruisers that result from it for since the bloody game begun. thx for getting wise to the fact.

a great many of us have been saying this forever, weapons orther ten DHCs are in sorry shape since forever. this thread is my annual public complaint about them on the forums.

if you use 2 AtB, key binds are a must, you will need to activate it every 10 seconds. in my thread i linked to a GUI that can make keybinds for you, just assign a key to an action and it will generate it for you. its in the table of contents

Well it really didn't work out for me, it rendered me heal-less so I'm going back to my EPtW build

Quote:

a great many of us have been saying this forever, weapons orther ten DHCs are in sorry shape since forever. this thread is my annual public complaint about them on the forums.

With regard to this, I fully support any action to bring balance back to weapons

Tacofangs is (genuinely) the best dev ever and the forumites adore him

Well it really didn't work out for me, it rendered me heal-less so I'm going back to my EPtW build

it does have pretty big disadvantages, but you can mitigate them. you run a copy of EPtA, and you tend to have about 30 aux most of them time. AtS, sharing a cooldown with AtB, is basically a non option. but you can use HE and TSS, and with the excelsior ET1 at at their global. the aux based heals without a batery will be less powerful, but you can use them twice as often. just have lots of aux batts on hand when you need healing. since you don't have high aux ever, you cant build a very good healer around tech doff cruisers.

Anyone else notice on tribble how all DEVs play Tactical characters? If they all played Engineers they would better understand this issue. I know that sounds weird, until you think about it a bit and remember Engineers rely on BO skills, not Captain skills, for all spike damage regardless of ship.